How Mikie Sherrill won the New Jersey Democratic primary for governor

In a crowded race for governor, U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill built a statewide coalition in the Democratic primary that stretched from New Jersey’s northernmost county down to Cape May.

Turnout in the Democratic contest improved by more than 270,000 votes compared with 2017, when Gov. Phil Murphy won the party’s last contested primary.

Sherrill, a four-term member Congress and the only woman in the race, won roughly a third of the Democratic vote in the six-person primary — more than 100,000 votes and 13 percentage points ahead of her closest competitor, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who split the progressive vote with Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, the third-place finisher.

Though she was the last to join the six-person race, Sherrill was long considered the front-runner. But experts did not rule out a path to victory for anyone in the race, so the decisiveness of her win — declared just 40 minutes after polls closed — came as a surprise to some political observers who had anticipated a more competitive race.

A little over a month before the primary, New Jersey pollster Patrick Murray said that “undecided is in first place; Mikie Sherrill is in a distant second, and everybody else is crowded around her in third place.”

That was part of Sherrill’s strategy.

She captured 15 of the state’s 21 counties. None of her opponents was able to build the same level of statewide appeal of the federal lawmaker and former Navy helicopter pilot.

Despite the strength of her win, South Jersey represents a relative weak spot for Sherrill compared with the rest of the state. She narrowly won Camden County but came up short in Gloucester, Salem, and Cumberland Counties.

Sherrill did not broadcast television ads in a significant way until April, while some of her opponents had been on the airwaves for months. She was criticized by some politicos for that, but it paid off.

The lawmaker’s campaign knew that her tried and true biography as a Navy helicopter pilot, federal prosecutor, and mother of four resonated with voters. Some voters told The Inquirer they chose Sherrill in the crowded field simply because she is a Navy vet, a woman, or both.

One of those voters was Rachel Alban, 35, a Naval Academy graduate who attended Sherrill’s campaign visit to Evesboro Downs Park in Burlington County last week.

“I support fellow Naval Academy women and veterans, and think that we need more of them serving our country in various government positions,” said Alban, a South Jersey resident.

Sherrill also focused on a straightforward message of affordability and fighting President Donald Trump, two key issues.

Still, her campaign had to make sure voters across the state knew about her — and, most importantly, at the right time.

Even politically engaged New Jerseyans who attended Sen. Andy Kim’s late April town hall told The Inquirer they were fatigued by national politics and had not begun to tune in to the governor’s race.

Sherrill’s campaign saved its resources for the weeks leading up to the election, when her advisers knew voters were finally paying attention. So it didn’t really matter that she was outspent by competitors.

In the final week of the race, Sherrill had a 2-1 spending advantage over any other candidate because of her team’s earlier discipline, according to a campaign memo obtained by The Inquirer.

Sherrill’s campaign had raised $9.4 million and spent $8.5 million as of late May, which was on par with the other top-funded candidates in the race by that time.

But the super PAC supporting her had spent under $4 million as of late May, a small number compared with the nearly $40 million spent at the time by the super PAC supporting Sean Spiller, the president of the New Jersey Education Association. Spiller won just a single county, Cumberland, and finished fifth in the field despite the PAC’s hefty spending — which came from dues from teachers in his union.

Two outside groups had spent $11.6 million on U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer by that time, including one that received about $10 million from his congressional campaign. Gottheimer won only Bergen County, which he represents in Congress, and finished fourth in the overall field.

Sherrill had support from the most Democratic county committees in the state, often referred to as the local machines. Her support from 10 county organizations spanned the central and northern parts of the state.

Her campaign understood the importance of establishment endorsements, even with the so-called county line dead. Sure, she would no longer get a favorable ballot position as a result of those endorsements, but she was able to secure all the benefits that come along with them.

Strong county party organizations have lists of volunteers who post lawn signs and work phone banks, relationships with local labor unions, a headquarters to use for those efforts, and an understanding of local political dynamics.

“Anybody who doesn’t get the county party endorsement has to build that kind of infrastructure from scratch, and that’s very, very difficult,” said Benjamin Dworkin, the founding director of the Rowan Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship in South Jersey.

That support surely bolstered Sherrill’s campaign’s own volunteers, field operations, community outreach, and outside endorsements, but it cannot be given all the credit for her success.

Sherrill’s campaign recruited nearly 2,000 volunteers, made about 580,000 phone calls and 555,700 texts, and knocked on more than 120,000 doors, according to her campaign’s memo.

She also won and lost counties that did not line up with the machine endorsements.

Sherrill won Atlantic, Camden, and Burlington Counties in the south, despite those machines rallying behind former state Senate President Steve Sweeney, the only South Jersey candidate in the race. Meanwhile, she lost two northern counties, Essex and Union, which endorsed her but came through for Baraka.

Sweeney won Gloucester and Salem Counties by wide margins and had sizable support in other southern counties, but he barely made a dent in the rest of the state and finished last in the race with only about 7%.

Sherrill carried Cape May and Ocean Counties, the only two counties in the south that did not endorse Sweeney.

Cape May did not endorse in the race, and Ocean County held a convention in which Sherrill led Sweeney, 63-31, but did not garner enough votes for an endorsement.

She also won Warren County in the north, which was one of the two counties that endorsed Gottheimer.

Machine support had been viewed as crucial for gubernatorial races before this year, with serious contenders deciding not to run in 2017 after Murphy secured establishment backing.

Sherrill this year garnered at least 26,814 more votes than Murphy did that year as of Thursday, as overall turnout was way up.

Observers have also noticed that Sherrill and Baraka, placing first and second despite being outspent, were both prominent on cable news in the weeks leading up to the election, Dworkin said.

Baraka was on air for his arrest and direct fight with the Trump administration, and Sherrill was also on TV criticizing U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, saying he should “man up” and resign after his second Signal chat scandal.

Sherrill also embraced alternative media throughout her campaign, making appearances with internet personalities of different strokes, from TikTok to Substack to YouTube, and even held an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) session on Reddit.

Her campaign also had an online ambassador program for people who wanted to help spread her message.